Vivian Arend - Diamond Dust

She was halfway down the hall when he called, “Caroline…what?”

“Caroline Bradley.”

She waited for him to say something else, but that was it. Silence. He watched her, though. Even as she widened the gap between them, she swore his gaze burned a hole in the back of her oversized cover-up. While she waited for the service elevator to arrive, deliberately fiddling with items in the cart, he was stripping her in his mind. The final glance over her shoulder as she slipped into the elevator proved he was still standing there, naked from the waist up, wearing a smile that spoke of amusement and sexual attraction.

She stabbed the button for the basement level before collapsing against the wall with a huge sigh.

Oh my Lord, what a mess.

Evan clutched the kitchen countertop and held on for dear life.

Not possible. Not possible.

Freaking possible, he argued with his brain. It had to be possible, because the only other damn solution was he’d gone around the bend.

He leaned over and sniffed. Moved a foot to the right and repeated the action.

“Umm, Alpha?”

“Go away.”

Nothing was going to distract him. This was far too important. He vaguely remembered shouting at the pack members in the kitchen to stay the hell back. Most of them had scurried like a bunch of mice as he’d stalked his way up and down the narrow aisles between the workstations.

The tantalizing aroma had hooked him as he’d left his office and led him in circles, desperate to maintain the trail.

There it was, just the faintest hint, but enough to drag him another two feet to the right where his head smacked into the chef’s broad belly.

The man grunted in pain and stepped back. “Alpha, I need to use this section to make the orders. Do you suppose you could…do whatever you’re doing on the other side of the kitchen? Please.”

“Shhh.” Evan dropped to his knees, following the fading scent. His wolf grew more frantic the fainter the aroma became. “ Damn it all.”

He lay full out on his belly on the floor, inching forward until his nose squished against the base of the counter. There. For one second he’d gotten a stronger whiff. Somewhere under this counter was what he was looking for.

He forced his arm under the narrow opening and fumbled until his fingers bumped a tiny, cylindrical object. A second later he was on his feet, staring at a plastic container of lip balm.

“Dude, if you’ve got chapped lips, there are easier ways to deal with it than disrupting the entire kitchen.”

Evan snapped his head to the side to discover his Beta beside him. Shaun’s relaxed grin and slouched body displayed a comfort level that was miles away from Evan’s current state.

“It’s not just a lip balm.”

Shaun nodded sagely. “Sure. It’s a special lip balm. I understand.”

The scent had nearly vanished, but he still had one way to track it. There was no time to lose. Evan pressed the tube into Shaun’s palm. “You will hold that for me with extreme caution. Do not use it, fondle it, hell, don’t even look at it too hard, or I will rip out your throat.”

Shaun curled his hand around the tiny object. “If that means something in secret Alpha code, I never got around to reading the manual. I’m lost.”

Evan tore off his shirt and fumbled with his belt. “I’ll explain later.”

“You’re shifting?” Shaun lowered his voice. “It’s the middle of the day, this might not be a great idea.”

“Cover me.” Evan was naked, clothes abandoned on the floor. He changed forms even as his best friend and Beta continued to complain.

“Cover you. Great. Sure—just want to point out the last time I covered for you I ended up in the doghouse with my mate.”

The change to wolf made the world brighter. Sharper. Evan loved the first moments after exchanging his human side for his animal one, and usually took time to revel in the differences. Today there was only one distinction between his forms he wanted to exploit with an urgency that made his heart pound.

He took a deep breath through his nose, his sharper lupine senses picking up on the scent. He howled his delight, then raced forward, ducking through legs as the trail meandered the length of the kitchen to the closed back door of the restaurant loading dock.

He smacked his shoulder into the metal in frustration.

“Slow down,” Shaun snapped, hands on the door release. “You take off without me and animal services will have your tail in a sling.”

Evan bared his teeth. The scent was vanishing, and he didn’t care that it was his best friend blocking him. He was ready to draw blood.

“Fine, be that way. Just…don’t bite anyone.” His Beta pushed open the door, and Evan was gone, nose down, the wind and the other scents adding confusion to his target. If it weren’t so very addictive, he might not have picked it up in the first place, but the aroma was now permanently branded on his brain.

He stretched out his stride as the path straightened to follow the sidewalk. A few gasps of surprise escaped from the humans he brushed past. Tourists who weren’t used to seeing wolves roam the streets of Whitehorse. The locals had grown more accustomed to the occasional sighting, although Evan’s rule as Alpha had been to make pack keep a low profile.

What he was doing was in total violation of his own rules, but fuck that.

Rules were made to be broken.

When the sidewalk and his target turned a corner, hope rose in Evan’s heart. They were only steps away from the pack house. Damn, his mark was under his nose?

Then the addictive scent cut off as if it had never existed, the pack house to his left, a single metal pole to his right, with the bus-stop route displayed on it.

Frustration knocked his hind legs from under him, and he sat on the sidewalk wondering how undignified it would be if his pack glanced out the windows and noticed him pouting like a two-year-old.

Loud footfalls slapped the ground behind him as Shaun finally caught up.

“Whoa, okay. There’s a lady on the corner of Lambert and Fourth who got a shot of you, and I bet we’re talking YouTube before the end of the hour. I hope the footage was worth it.”

Evan snarled his displeasure, rising and heading for the pack house.

“Hey, don’t get growly at me.” Shaun followed him to the front door and opened it. “The only other option was knock her phone from her hand or steal it, and having to get bailed out of the slammer, again , wouldn’t be a good thing for my record.”

Seconds after entering the house Evan was back on two legs, dragging a hand through his hair in frustration. Pack members lazing in the common room picked up on his mood and vanished like an afternoon winter sun, leaving them utterly alone. “You’re right. It’s fine. Remind me to get Caroline to do a follow-up with our media contacts to make sure no one makes a huge deal of a lone wolf in the street.”

“What happened?” Shaun dipped his head to examine him closer, although Evan noticed his friend stayed out of swinging range. “You need me to help with anything?”

Now that it had finally happened, things made so much more sense. There was no use in beating around the bush. He stared at his Beta and straight out said it. “I caught a whiff of my mate.”

Shaun’s eyes widened. “Dude.”

“She was in the kitchen. Then she left.” Evan paced to the room he kept in the pack house, in search of spare clothing. “You got that lip balm?”

His Beta passed it back. Evan lifted the object to his nose and breathed in her scent, happy little hormones dancing along his spine and tying hundreds of yellow ribbons around his spinal column.